Clarify Online and Offline Relationships during Web Design: Part I – Web Form Review

As the initial point of contact for your prospects, your brand’s online marketing strategy must consider the interrelationships between online touch points and the internal business processes that are driven by those initial contacts. Web forms are the first catch-point for all lead generation on your website. As such, they are a critical set of tools supporting your online marketing strategy.

As a second stage of the web design process, it is critical that you lead your development team into a consumer flow review of all forms on your website. These forms fill the sales funnel and provide sales people with insights to positively impact their customer engagements. All too often web forms are moved “as is” to a new website, under the guise of the “we’ve always done it this way” mindset. As an executive in your company, it is that this stage in the web design process when your team must engage in a complete review of all web forms and their function in your organizations lead derivation.

What Is a Web Form Review?

At a very high level, a web form review offers your team the opportunity to assess the lead generation potential of all forms living on your website and their purpose in your every-day business processes. During the web form review, you are looking to answer the following questions:

What are your web forms and where do they live on the website?

Are there any adjustments that can be made to existing forms to simplify them or tighten up the lead capture process?

What are the forms used for?

Where does the data go when captured?

What is done with the data and who does it? Specifically, what variables are pulled out, what format does it need to be in, and what steps are taken after they get the data?

The team to handle this project are those people that work with the web form data, the ones that are involved in the #5 step in the review process, and ideally, one point person to review each respective form with its end user. By using a point person to round up all the review details, a comprehensive scope of your brand’s web form activity will be developed.

What Is Done with the Web Form Review Data?

Once all web forms are reviewed and the data is compiled, the next step in the process is to do a thorough review of the data acquired from your internal team and assess the workflow that follows the data collection. This relates to the second half of question #5 in your web for review, specifically, what steps are taken after they get the data?

Reassessing Data Processes

Internal business processes are the follow up step to your top of funnel data capture driven by your web forms, and within those processes can be hidden flaws that affect conversions of leads to sales, elevate overhead costs and slow down your company’s ability to improve your sales timelines.

In our next post, we will discuss the analysis of your data processes from initial contact thru to your post-sale functions to ensure that the data you are pulling down from your web forms as part of your online marketing strategy have the highest potential of furthering your brand goals and increasing sales.